The Moons Are Burning
by Soncnica
Summary: SpaceAU. Dean's got burn scars from at least half-a-dozen blaster firefights over the years, but he's never taken a direct hit before.


**A/N: Written for this prompt "Dean's got burn scars from at least half-a-dozen blaster firefights over the years, but he's never taken a direct hit before." made by deirdre_c here at To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before Sam/Dean & J2 Comment-fic Meme on LJ. **

**Warnings: language, blood, space. **

**Betaed by the lovely shenshen77, but any mistake you will find belongs to me and I'm sorry.  
**

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The first time a blaster almost hit him and would've probably killed him dead, if not for his amazing skills, was when he was fourteen and running away from a skin trader on Io. That had been close, close, close and he had a lovely little thin burn scar in the dip between his fourth and fifth rib. Every time he looked there, the skin was all bunched up and hard as leather.

That had also been the first time he actually ran for his life, because the skin trader would skin him alive if he had caught him and his skin would've just become one of many the man had been selling.

The second time a blaster almost hit him was when he was fifteen and the fight that broke up in a bar specializing in oxygen smuggling, left him wobbling and staggering out of the bar, out into the thick layer of smog. The burn scar on his calf, right under the knee, stung and he couldn't breathe right. It hurt more than the one he got a year before, the one who was throbbing in sympathy between his ribs.

"Come on, you asshole."

Sam was yelling into his ear - chunks of spit flying into his hair and ear - and holding him up, preventing him from falling on his face into the desert sand.

"Fuck, hurts."

"I know, dumbass, just be happy it wasn't a direct hit. Now, come on, move."

Sam at eleven was goddamn strong and too smart for his own good and they made it to the Impala in no time. Their faces were covered with sand, his leg was covered in hot blood and his father was covered in anger and concern.

"What did you two do now?"

"Took down a monster, 's what."

"Yeah and then a fight broke out and Dean got ... shot."

"You good, son?"

"Just a graze."

And another scar had been born. Another piece of his flesh burned off.

The third one happened when he was seventeen and Sam got his own blaster. Small thing, just perfect for his hands to hold and for his fingers to train on. His aim had been perfect shooting beer cans in the Earth's thick woods, but when a bird flew out from the canopy of leaves, he startled, pressed the trigger and barely missed Dean's arm.

"Fuck!"

It hurt, and the thing hadn't even shot that close to him. He could actually see the skin on his forearm turn black for a second then red, then a bubble formed and erupted yellow puss like a volcano and left him bleeding. It all happened so fast the world spun under his feet and he would have fallen down to the ground and maybe broken his ass, if Sam hadn't caught him and lowered him down slowly.

"Shit, Dean, 'm sorry, 'm so sorry, 'm sorry."

He watched with horror when Sam wanted to touch his arm, but he yanked it away and gritted through his teeth to fucking shut up.

But he wore the scar with pride, which was fucked up, but it reminded him of Sammy when the kid went away to school.

Those dark, dark four years had given him seven more scars. Two on his left leg, three on his back, one right beneath his left nipple and one across his belly.

Now he was twenty-six, cruising the vast expanse of space with his brother as his co-pilot, the Impala steady as she went, their father lost somewhere among the stars and he was feeling good. The music of the old Earth was blasting through the speakers, making his little brother scowl in the seat next to his and all was well in life.

Until it wasn't. Until they docked on Callisto and went underground.

They had always sought trouble, or trouble sought them, who knew anymore, but they were famous ... the Winchester brothers and their Impala, trying to bring order into the chaos of space by dealing with illegal creature dealing and trading, skin trading, human trafficking, oxygen smuggling and so on, but most of all, protecting and serving the United Moon's Federation. They wore the tattoo on their chests with pride and a sense of freedom and protection.

But it was those things that usually brought them the most trouble, because as soon as the people saw them, they started to run, fight or simply, well, became stupid(er).

This time, it was human trafficking. Slave trading. They got a sniff of it from Mr. Bobby, the captain of SalvageYard, but he was too far away to get to Callisto to deal with it himself. And well, any chance to kill shit was a chance they would gladly take.

The tunnels under the moon's surface were made of hard packed mud and rocks. There was a whole city underneath the surface, a city of mud and dirt, hot and reeking of aliens and humans. Reeking of terror and sweat.

They tried to be sneaky coming into the city, but they were spotted almost right away by a little kid whose face had three eyes and a snake's tongue and who was screaming at the top of his lungs: "Winchessssster brothersssss, Winchessssster brothersssss!"

The sound of his 'sssss' echoed loudly in the enormous cave, sneaking around street corners and filling every cottage.

"We've been made, brother!"

They killed the kid by blasting his head off. He was dangerous, probably a slave and death was mercy.

-:-

The rescuing mission just went downhill fast after that. They found the cottage where the humans were kept; three of them were dead already, four were near death and there was nothing they could do for them but save them from suffering. Five of them were still good enough to walk, maybe run with a bit of help and one man was begging them for death. So they obliged.

Their father taught them that sometimes death was salvation and if humans or aliens begged them for it, they should do their best to grant them their wish and do it quick, painless and efficient. Their father wasn't a cold person; he was just shaped into the man he was by life in space. By life in the dirty darkness.

"Okay, come on, come on, let's go!"

They could see a spark of hope in the remaining five humans; three men and two women, and that spark got them to the tunnels pretty fast.

They knew who their saviors were, they trusted them to get them to freedom, but what they didn't know, could never ever know, was that the Winchester brothers were taught one more thing by their father.

So when the slave traders came running for them, shooting at them from their blasters, yelling, shouting, screaming obscenities at them in every known lunar language, and finally managed to shoot Dean, who was bringing up the rear ... that one more secret, whispered in the dark when John was tucking his kids in bed, came into play.

Forget about everything and everyone, and protect your brother.

"Dean!"

He could hear Sam through the loud rush of blood in his ears, through the blindingly burning pain in his thigh, through his chest being squeezed into the rocky ground.

He could feel Sam's arms; strong, capable, never missing their target, grip his biceps and pull him up from the ground.

He couldn't see anything, there were just sparks of white light swimming in front of his eyes like the goddamned stars.

He was being pulled and pushed and he stumbled more times than when he was almost mortally drunk, and he collided with his brother's body more times than he wanted, because Sam's body was as hard as the tunnels' walls. The only difference was that Sam was going to save him, while the tunnel wanted him dead.

He could feel spit dripping from his mouth, but he couldn't close his mouth or lift his head, because the pain in his thigh was consuming him. Eating him ... it was alive and gnawing at his skin and flesh and bone, swallowing chunks of his burned flesh.

This would leave more than a scar, he was sure of that.

He heard more shouts, voices that sounded panicked and in pain, but they faded into the background while he was tripping all over his feet and being held onto by Sam, with all the strength his kid brother possessed.

He couldn't see anything; it was all dark, sometimes it was interrupted by orange light, probably coming from Sam's blaster.

He was gasping for breath now. Gasping for clean oxygen that was coming from capsules he had lodged in his nostrils. In all this dirt and carbon dioxide, oxygen was more valued that anything else. Even water.

He was burning up. He would burn up, and damnit, but he had been almost shot - meaning he was already too far away, or just standing to close - by a blaster so many times, has enough scars all over his body to prove that, but this ... a direct hit, this was something else. This was like being splashed by the ice-freezing waters that spew out of the geysers on Enceladus. Those fuckers burn.

"Fucking walk, goddamnit Dean, come on, man!"

He grunted and groaned and wanted to say _suck it, fucker, I can't_, but a hard pull on his arms and around his hips had him spinning around, loosing his balance and he lost it. He screamed, gurgled and passed out.

-:-

"Wake up, hey, wake up!"

A stinging slap to his cheek made him open his eyes, and he saw a blurry image of his brother's face. It was like looking through smoke, Sam's face was swimming in the smoke and it made him gag and throw up. Hands rolled him on his side and he puked thick, yellow, foamy strings of spit all over someone's shoes.

"Gross, man, damnit."

Sam.

He spat and groaned and puked some more, but this time on the floor, because Sam moved behind him.

"Wh..."

"Impala, sickbay, you're hurt. Bad."

"Bitch..."

"Yeah, exactly. Gonna puke some more?"

"Nhhah.." he breathed out and wiped the spit from his chin with the back of his hand.

"Come on, roll on your back."

He sunk into Sam's arms and let them support him and pull him into whatever position his brother wanted. Because what Sam wanted, Sam always got.

"Fuck, Sam, fuck, Sam, fuck Sam, hurts like a son of a bitch!"

He covered his eyes with his hand, because the darkness relaxed his nausea and the pain in his leg.

"I know, man, I know. I numbed it, just wait a sec."

He felt a scream trying to rise up his throat, but he swallowed it down, because he knew he would throw up after screaming his throat raw. Sam said to wait a sec, just a sec.

He tried to grip his thigh, tried to feel if it was actually still there, because he kind of felt it might not really be there.

But fingers squeezing his wrist stopped him.

"Is ... is my leg still there?"

"Yeah, it's there, it's just ... you're hurt really bad, man. I set the course to the Moon, I can't do anything here. The docs there might..."

He nodded. Their dad taught them basic medicine, but if Sam couldn't fix it, then yeah the docs on the Moon might be able to. Maybe. They better or else they would have a very pissed off Sam to deal with.

"The humans?"

"Dead."

It wasn't the first time that one of them had to follow dad's secret rule and it wouldn't be the last. Doesn't mean it doesn't sting and hurt, though. But it was for the best.

"So I, uh, numbed the wound, so you probably shouldn't feel anything really right now just some memory pain. I stopped the bleeding and uh, put some cold packs on it... Dean, the blaster, it burned your pants right into your flesh, I just..."

"Did good, Sammy." he croaked out.

He knew what the wound probably looked like. Big, bloody, red and black, with bubbles forming that when they would burst, would hurt like a son of a bitch. The smell would be awful, worse than smelling decomposing bodies. And his pants were burned into the wound? Oh hell fuckin' no, yet he still wanted to touch it, but he trusted Sam. He would always trust Sam.

He shuddered and took a deep breath. The memory of the pain when the blaster hit him was making him queasy again. Making him shiver and twitch and a cool hand on his forearm was all it took for him to sink into calmness.

"Get some sleep. We'll get to the Moon in about three hours."

"Don't ... don't push baby too hard."

"I won't."

They both knew she would be pushed to her limits.

**4 days later**

"Dude, looks nasty."

Sam's warm breath over the wound made his toes curl, it was ticklish.

"Feels nasty too."

They were looking at his thigh, the wound big and disgusting, red and jagged and still leaking puss. It smelled horrible too, but the docs said that he would be fine, able to walk and run, but he would have a scar the size of Earth's Grand Canyon, but he was okay with it.

What was one more scar in a sea of many, hmm?

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**The End**


End file.
